there is a shrine called ‘Santa Maria di Nasida’ [...]” [4] With the short phrases that introduce this page Berosus, in the 16th century, and G.B. Caruso (with some slight variant) in the early 18th century, described the ancient town of Naso. According to both Berosus and Caruso it was formerly called "Nesus," which later became "Nasus". In practice, Berosus and Caruso had already laid the premises for the etymology of the town, that to this day is always derived from the Greek word "Nesos", or "island", meaning "a secluded spot." The great linguist Gerald Rohlfs "[...] defended the etymology of the local historians, that ‘Nasus’ (Nesus) derives from the Greek Doric 'Nasos' or from the Ionic-Attic ‘Nesos’ (island). This etymology, however, is not sufficiently supported by the documents, because the form 'Nesus' appears to be due to an etymological conjecture [5]. More likely, 'Naso' is derived from the Latin 'nasus' (nose), in the sense of 'tip', 'end'[...]" [6]. The clear impression that "Naso" derives from Latin and not from Greek is also expressed by Carlo Battisti, who wrote that some names were interpreted by Rohlfs as deriving from Greek, while instead they were "from Latin stem, with the adjectival suffix in '-icus', as 'nasus-nar-ica' and 'avis-av-ica'" [7]. Having established that "Naso" would seem to derive from Latin and not from Greek, then one wonders why there is this alternation between "N-[e]-so" and "N- [a]-so." A possible explanation could be that this linguistic phenomenon derives from the phonetic system of a language, or from the local languages. As was well explained by Rodney Sampson, often in the dialects of Southern Italy, when the vowel / a / is next to a nasal consonant / m, n /, it tends to become / e /: “In various Apulian dialects of the coastal area to the south and especially to the north of Bari, stressed /a/ evolves in a special way when adjacent to a nasal environment: 'N-a-sum' > 'N-e-so'” [8]. In Latin, for example, this phenomenon is normal, and this peculiar phonetic phenomenon is clearly visible in a Neo-Latin language such as French, where from Latin "Nasum" derives the word "N-e-z" [Nose] [9]. However, this "victory" of Latin over Greek is only a "half victory" because, apparently, in ancient times also the Greek word "Nesos" did not mean "island", but sometimes cape and rock overang: “[...] Something like 'promontory', or ‘projecting